NCJ Number
141774
Date Published
1993
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This paper explores the privatization of public violence as a form of state-organized terrorism used to control subject populations.
Abstract
The market for measures to provide security against terrorist threats has stimulated the corporate and private sectors to develop a variety of enterprises that offer counterterrorist services. A number of these firms may also offer their sophisticated skills to states which wish to enhance their capability for repressing rebellious citizenries. This privatization process will enable authoritarian regimes to manipulate their citizens more effectively without resorting to the threat or use of individual or mass physical violence. Through psychological techniques of intimidation, combined with the use of mass communication, repressive regimes can control a population while maintaining a facade of nonviolence. A more ominous potential of privatization is that liberal democratic states may unwittingly move toward more repressive practices if policymakers do not regulate private organizations which might use computers, data bases, techniques of public relations, and other techniques to intrude, intimidate, and increasingly manipulate a population that has become dependent on service industries. Also, if these organizations work in conjunction with governmental elements who wish to avoid being publicly accountable for their actions, there is danger that fragile democratic orders may be threatened by new and invidious forms of state-organized terrorism, repression, and control. A 23-item bibliography